


Organized Lightning

by BewareTheIdes15



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Pre-Slash, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BewareTheIdes15/pseuds/BewareTheIdes15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They almost die. It’s kinda become a hobby now. The pack is the official-unofficial Beacon Hills Near Death Experience Club. Oh, an evil something-or-other is in town trying to murder people for some reason we’re not going to figure out until probably way too late?  Must be friggin’ Tuesday.</p><p>So yeah, Stiles is used to almost dying. The part where he’s the one almost killing them, that’s new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Organized Lightning

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be the beginning to a longer story I couldn't quite figure out, but I think it stands alone too. IDEK, I've been kinda down on my writing lately and I just wanted to complete something.
> 
> Title from a line by George Carlin (yes, I'm random).

They almost die. It’s kinda become a hobby now. The pack is the official-unofficial Beacon Hills Near Death Experience Club.  _Oh, an evil something-or-other is in town trying to murder people for some reason we’re not going to figure out until probably way too late?_   Must be friggin’ Tuesday.

So yeah, Stiles is used to almost dying. The part where he’s the one almost killing them, that’s new.

Thunder claps overhead, jarringly close. The kiss of heat sparks over Stiles’ skin, turns his fingers bright for a second as electric threads web between them. He shakes them and the energy dissipates with a crackle of charged water droplets hitting the surrounding trees.

Rain is always cold. Doesn’t matter that they’re in the middle of a drought, or that the day was so blistering that the heat soaked into rocky ground is turning the fat raindrops into a haze of steam that clings to Stiles’ lungs like a wet rag and swirls around his feet, thick enough to make navigating gnarled tree branches and oddly places stones even more of a challenge than his own natural absence of grace usually makes it.

Assuming the word natural still applies to Stiles.

Those voices echo in his head.  _She pled for this._ ** _Do you think you would exist if we had not willed it so?_** _You fancy that you would be as you are without a piece of us inside you, boy?_ ** _We made you, half-breed._** _We come to claim what is owed._

One water-logged sneaker snags on a shadow and Stiles skids to ground on his hands and knees. Dirt slides between his fingers, too much clay and sand in it to make real mud. Bark and pine needles dig into his palms and there’s a rock under his shin that might have cut through his jeans but there’s too much water moving around him right now to feel whether he’s bleeding or not.

A root lovingly cradling his ankle twitches and Stiles lurches back to his feet. The rain has soaked into his clothes, weighing his body down as it stumbles forward without a clue what he’s running toward. Or even really what he’s running from. 

He can hear the pack crashing through the trees behind him, flanking him like idiots, but at least maintaining their distance.

That image of Scott is going to be seared into his brain until the day he dies; strung taut, white-hot veins of electricity licking at the surface of his skin. Stiles did that. He didn’t mean to, he didn’t mean… But he did it. Him. His- his  _power_.

If this is some kind of karmic middle finger for spending the year leading up to his eleventh birthday hoping for a letter from Hogwarts, message fucking received. Be careful what you wish for, Stiles Stilinski, because the universe wants to make you its prison-wife.

Scott’s going to be ok, though. Scott’ll definitely be ok. He was still breathing when Stiles started running and that’s all he needs to Deadpool that shit, right? Fuck, Stiles needs to get much more thorough and explicit details about how werewolf healing works. Assuming he can still ask after this is over. Assuming this ends.

He should have said yes. Should have just let them take him or whatever it was they were asking for in ‘payment’. He’s probably lived through worse. The pack would have found a way to rescue him. Or not. At least they would have known what they were going up against, made a plan or something. Maybe. Derek and Scott aren’t big on the thought-out plan-making, but Deaton could have possibly provided some semi-informative vagueries and Boyd’s smart, Boyd would have-

Stiles skids to a halt. They’re there, not ten feet ahead of him, staring in a way that’s not even in the same hemisphere as human. The rain doesn’t touch them.

If he’d ever considered what fairies would look like – he’s seriously regretting that lack of foresight now, but he’s had werewolves and kanimas and frickin’ high school to deal with – he wouldn’t have pictured them like this. The taller one is willow-slim, made up of weird, sharp angles like it was carved instead of born. For all Stiles knows, it was. It’s got short, choppy hair in a brighter shade of the nearly translucent white-going-green as the rest of its body, nothing but black pinpricks in the round, milky slickness of its eyes. The other one’s all smooth russet and olive, more person-esque with its compact muscles and high cheek bones and the long, black hair that’s buzzed close on one side of its scalp. A strange, jarring brand of beauty that could almost pass for a model, right up until it smiles a little wider than a human mouth should and shows fine, glittering shark teeth.

The dark one cocks its head to the side and trickles a scrutinizing look down Stiles’ body. Anything else on the planet, he’d say it was sizing him up, but this feels more like having his seams picked open and his insides rifled through.

“That was adorable,” it hisses, lisping around the consonants.

Onion-face doesn’t even bother moving its lips. “You can’t escape us, manling. That which is ours will always draw us near.” The voice is reedy in his head, brushing at the inside of his skull like a draft.

Cool rain keeps sliding down the bridge of his nose into his eyes, sticking like glitter in his eyelashes. He blinks and goes white-blind in the left one for a second when a tiny shard of electricity pulls taut and snaps with the lift of his eyelid.

Thundercloud-rumble made solid, Derek crashes through the underbrush and pivots, stops on a dime beside Stiles. He’s not quite on all fours, but it’s a close thing, claws dripping muddy water all over Stiles’ shoes, muzzle huffing a warm spot into the shoulder of Stiles’ hoodie. He still hasn’t gotten used to this more-wolf-than-human alpha level-up, but right about now Stiles is grateful for every little bit of extra ammo they can get.

The tips of his finger spark like blown breakers. Stiles curls them into his fist.

With significantly less grace than their leader, Boyd, Erica, and Jackson bound up from behind. Stiles hopes the fact that Isaac doesn’t means that he’s busy taking care of Scott. Somebody’s got to, and Stiles obviously isn’t up to snuff right now.

“This isn’t your affair,” The tall one says. Thinks. Whatever the fuck it’s doing. “We hold claim on his blood.”

Derek eases back onto his hind legs and takes two heavy steps to turn his body into a wall of black fur and muscle between Stiles and the fairies. He doesn’t move quite as fast on two feet, but the way he fucking towers over the rest of them makes up the difference. There is something to be said for the intimidation factor.

Shark-Tooth makes a crackle in its throat that Stiles doesn’t know how to interpret. The rest of the pack moves in around him, forming a glowing-eyed diamond with Stiles at the center.

Wood groans up above them, way more than the wind can account for. He isn’t sure what kind of powers fairies are supposed to have, but every legend he can think of off the top of his head makes them out to be nature spirits. Going by whatever’s happening with his own Static Cling Plus situation, he’s guessing there’s some variety in the supernatural abilities column.

There’s a charge in the air and Stiles doesn’t know if he’s the one putting it there. It’s the strangest feeling, like riding a roller coaster, minus the safety bar and the guarantee you’re going to come out of it alive. He’s half scared he’s going to piss himself or cry or something because this sensation… there’s so much of it, this crackle and zing along his skin, under it, tickling at the back of his eyeballs. It’s shoved his nerves way out onto a crumbling cliff’s edge and left them squirming for a handhold that isn’t there.

He could have killed Scott. Probably would have if most of the people he cares about weren’t all some special type of freaky themselves. If it had been Lydia, or Allison. His dad.

A long, low groan breaks off into a popping snarl above and to the left, the only warning at all before a tree branch as big around as Boyd is hammering into the wet soil where Derek was standing a heartbeat before. Stiles only sees it afterward, too busy having the air pummeled out of his chest by three hundred pounds of alpha as he’s shoved to the ground underneath the cage of Derek’s body.

The sudden crunch of bones, an alien screech, nearly blots out the howls shaking the ground and Stiles’ ribcage like a maraca. He can feel roots moving under the slick dirt, squirming and reaching out before Derek rolls them, sends Stiles flipping over rocks and splintered wood and, ok, now he’s definitely bleeding, but it doesn’t matter because the creepy white fairy is facing off with Derek while the other one tosses the betas around like chew toys and it’s starting to look like fairy trumps werewolf after all.

Derek’s mele partner does something with it’s hand; eerily long, spidery fingers twitching at its side. Stiles can’t make out exactly what happened, but Derek’s tumbling sideways, feet kicking out hard at something underneath the limp layers of rotting leaves.

Jackson flies through the air for all of four feet before he comes to a crunching stop against the trunk of an oak tree. A pitiful, hurt sound comes out of him that makes Derek’s ears twitch, but he stays where he is, eyes never leaving the big white fairy even though all it’s doing is standing there, flexing its fingers and looking mildly entertained.

It isn’t until pine needles break, brittle, against his palms that Stiles realizes he hasn’t gotten off his knees yet. That he can’t.

Another peal of lightening gouges a trench in the night overhead, deafeningly loud from this close up. Stiles pulls, twists, tries to get away from something he can’t see, can’t feel.  Terror’s starting to claw its way into the hollow of his chest, shredding at his attempts to keep himself calm. He can’t think if he’s not calm and they need him to think. That’s his job, that’s what he does. That’s his place in the pack.

Something that looks too thick to be blood is seeping down from a jagged set of cuts in the long-haired one’s arm. Boyd and Erica are circling, switching off feints while Jackson struggles to get vertical. Derek’s hunkered down low to the ground, shifting on his feet like he’s torn between putting himself in front of Stiles or the betas, a portrait of tense muscle in wet highlight and pitch-dark shadow.

Shadow.

Disjointed and crazy, the word wraps itself around Stiles like a come-on from a boa constrictor. Chokes him, or maybe that’s just the fear, sharp and cold as an ice pick up his spine. Some brief, premature thought flitters by about what an absolute shit time this would be to pick up the panic attack habit again before it’s gone, wiped out by _shadow, shade_. 

Shade is a- is a power. An element. It’s not something humans generally tap into, too wild, completely different operating system from the kind of healing and protection spells Deaton’s been teaching him. But for something that’s not human, it could be possible. Likely even. 

Stiles has no idea where it comes from. Part Deaton’s ‘believe’ spiel, part divine intervention, part pure-D luck. Whatever the reason, though, when he reaches out – feeling about as stupid and helpless as he always does, closing his eyes to play make-believe while everybody around him is knuckle-deep in a fight for their lives –  _She pled for this_  sings through his memory, struck-bell clear, and from there it’s not so much grasping for something as it is exhaling.

The sensation in strange, like literally grabbing onto a shadow with his brain. Like getting his hands on solid air. Like frenching a fucking light socket. It hammers into him the wrong way around, this shaken-up, against the grain kind of feeling as if his arteries and his veins just traded job, everything in him flowing the opposite direction. His fingertips are tingling and his mind is jumpy like he’s a week off of Adderall, but it’s sickly good, too, in a way he should be trying to ignore. Bulletproof on the razor edge of crazy.

This sweet, metallic thrill sizzles at the back of his throat and licks gratefully at the beds of his fingernails. Supplicant to him as he trawls through a moment like wet concrete and finds this luminous pulse he realizes he was looking for ten seconds after he’s already done with it. 

The fairies both feel it, just enough in advance to focus on him, try and sever ties, pull away too long after it’s way too late. He can feel their surprise gone to panic, ripple and sway, and he snips at the soft throb of power in them like an errant thread.

The world goes quiet beyond the sounds of the rain.

Stiles is breathing harder than he thought; deep, sucking breaths that rattle weirdly in his throat. He tries to clear it and ends up choking on spit that tastes like dirty pennies for his trouble. The thrumming in his system has died down to a geriatric wheeze. Nobody wants to get caught dealing to the Sheriff’s kid, and Stiles has never tried very hard to get his hands on anything harder than his own scrip, but he thinks this might be what crashing off a hardcore high feels like. 

The pack is staring slack-jawed at him over the bodies of the fairies. 

The bod- 

Did he- Did he just-

He misses the moment that Derek moves, but he’s suddenly got what is probably a very cold, wet nose pressing into his scalp and snuffling along his neck. For some people, this would be a seriously surreal moment. He wonders what their lives must be like.

***

The air tastes like damp charcoal, floor a patchwork of fallen leaves and debris, ink-blot splotches where rain has leaked through the seams of this pathetic excuse for indoors. There’s enough airflow howling through the walls to keep the musty smell at bay, but it’s still like nothing so much as a cave.

Stiles has found himself a wall to hold up in one of the partially rebuilt upstairs bedrooms, shoulders slumped against moldering drywall. He doesn’t know who slept here before the house looked like a stiff breeze would blow it down, hasn’t wanted to stir things up with questions since Derek started quietly working on the place last year, but as far as he knows, nobody’s ever died up here, which makes it an improvement over the living room and the basement. The front yard.

Man, Derek’s house is depressing.

It probably doesn’t help his mood that Stiles’s jeans are soaked to his skin – his hoodie and t-shirt are flung dripping over the stair railing - and that he’s shivering from either the chill, or shock, or some kind of weird after-effect of his own mutant-fairy-deathray. 

He flips the chunk of burned wood he’d picked off of the window sill over in his hand, fills out the line of the protection sigil he’s drawn onto the wall over and over. He’s got no clue if it will even help against fairies, but every little bit counts when the wolf’s at the door. Or whatever the appropriate metaphor is. Stiles’ life kinda stopped working in metaphors a while back.

Derek’s somewhere downstairs, on the phone with one of the betas. Deaton had called a little while ago when Isaac showed up with Scott flung over his shoulder. They’d had him on speakerphone, but Stiles blanked on most of the conversation after ‘Scott’s recovering’. He’s pretty sure there was something about elemental magicks – with a ‘ks’, because the shit that nearly kills you is never with a ‘c’ – interfering with werewolfery and- he really doesn’t know. Scott’s recovering. 

He’s pretty sure he answered some questions from Deaton too, but he could not, under extreme duress, even begin to guess what they were. 

Shock, definitely. Stiles is normally way better at details than this.

Erica’s down at the station, just to make sure no Tinkerbells from hell decide to take an interest in Stiles’ dad. Suffice to say Stiles wasn’t crazy about that plan, but him going was more likely to put his dad in the line of fire than anything, and the alternative was Boyd scoping out the sheriff’s office while Erica went to ask Allison what the hunters know about fairies, which, no. Jackson’s off trying to rope Lydia into helping, and honestly that’s the direction most of Stiles’ hope lays in, however beat-up and busted the scraps of it may be.

He should be doing something. They’re all out there risking life and limb trying to help save him from  _fucking fairies_  and here he is waiting, just as useless as when he was a boring, breakable human. More useless. At least as a human he didn’t have to worry about accidentally fricasseeing somebody because he twitched wrong.

He should go home and try to research. He should track down the fairies somehow and- and kill them or turn himself over to them or something. He should get the hell out of Beacon Hills before he takes the pack and everybody they love down with him.

He should call his dad. He  _wants_  to call his dad. He’d also rather perform ocular surgery on himself with a rusty pitchfork than try and figure out what to say.

Does he shout? Does he scream and seethe and throw shit, because that’s kind of exactly what he feels like doing. Because his mom apparently made some kind of deal with supernatural fucking creatures just so he could exist. 

Maybe. 

He thinks that’s what they were getting at. 

And his dad has maybe been watching over him every day, knowing he was going to go Cinderella when the clock struck midnight on his eighteenth birthday, except instead of pumpkins and mice his life was going to turn into electrified shit. 

Possibly. 

She’d been sick off and on for a long time. She didn’t tell him so until close to the end, because she didn’t want him to be worried that he’d turn out the same way someday. He hadn’t been, really, but every little thing she told him at that point had seemed so precious that the reasons behind it hadn’t really mattered. Most of her life, she’d said, relapsing and remitting. They’d told her before she got out of high school that she probably wouldn’t ever have kids. Might not even live long enough to try. And then Stiles had happened, like he was Meant To Be, and she was… okay. For so long. 

She’d called him her good luck charm. Fairly fucking ironic since the only thing he sees looking back is a lot of danger and death and destruction with him leading the charge straight into it. 

Stiles may be some type of lucky, but it’s not the good kind.

Firefly sparks snap between his knuckles when strong fingers close around his wrist. The muscles in Derek’s forearm tense, stark in the greyscale light, but he just holds onto Stiles like he was anticipating the shock. That doesn’t actually make Stiles feel any better.

“You should lie down.” Derek’s voice is soft and even. Green. That’s not a thing a voice can be, green, but yeah. Green. Like, sagey greyish green. “You smell tired.” 

Stiles possibly doesn’t handle that with the highest level of decorum. 

“You’re all full of shit, you know that?” he shouts, jerking his arm out of Derek’s hold just in time to watch another round of sparks to zip over the surface of his skin like a freaking plasma ball at a kids’ museum. “All this paranormal bullshit with hearing colors and smelling feelings and this is not how it works, okay? Just, like, physics says no!”

Derek eyebrows at him, because Derek’s eyebrows are verbs unto themselves. “You should really lie down.”

He doesn’t wait for Stiles to come up with another response to live up to the splendor of ‘physics says no’, so Stiles just bobs along behind as Derek leads him down the hallway to one of the smaller rooms on the end. Clearly it’s one Derek’s been working on the hardest, because it’s almost completely done. The sheetrock is still bare, and the warped wood floor needs refinishing just like the rest of the upstairs, but it’s solid, four walls and everything. These are accomplishments when it comes to Derek.

Bunched in one corner is a pile of what looks like painting dropcloths. He’s not sure why he’s surprised that Derek would think that’s a bed so impressive it’d be worth walking across the house to sleep on. But it’s not like Stiles has a lot else to contribute besides holding still and trying not to kill anybody.

Grumbling softly to himself, he tries to kick the dropcloths into something cushy enough to pass for a mattress. Weighs the odds of getting redressed fast enough if the fairy-dust cavalry shows up before deciding  _screw it_  and kicking off his squishy jeans and sneakers. Wouldn’t be the first time something that wanted to kill him caught him with his pants down. Literally would be a refreshing change of pace.

The canvas is scratchy on his skin when he lays down and he can feel the floor grinding against the back of his skull through the thin layer of padding. He’s had worse. In the last couple of years, they all have. 

Outside, the rain has calmed down to a steady patter, the whisper of it shivering over Stiles’ skin, the build of each fresh lightning strike itching in the center of his palms. Being horizontal makes it worse. Or maybe it just negates all the bruised aches and overworked muscles that he could focus on before. 

He feels sore and unsteady inside his skin, like his soul’s been knocked out of joint. If things like him have souls.

Flat as the dust prickling his nose, his voice drones out, “Do I smell like them?”

Derek’s still standing just inside the doorway and it occurs to Stiles that he just stripped down to his underwear in front of the guy. Not that the pack’s big on modesty or anything, but Stiles isn’t usually the one wandering around in various states of nudity. Because Stiles does not have a supernaturally enhanced six-pack. 

Just to double-check, he flips back the bit of fabric flopped limply over his middle but it doesn’t look like he’s spontaneously developed the physique of a Renaissance statue. Werewolves get all the good shit.

Derek opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but thinks better of it. He’s dry, because apparently Derek is the only one who ever bothered to follow up on Stiles’ brilliant clothing-stash idea, even though everybody they know gets some part of their wardrobe ripped off their bodies or shredded or bloodstained on a regular basis. He’d tried to foist the pair of floppy grey sweatpants he’s wearing onto Stiles, but that would have meant having him walk around naked all night. Stiles’ train of thought isn’t really chugging in a direction that would usually make that awkward, but it’s still not something he’s especially keen to deal with.

“Come on,” Stiles sighs, rolling his head against the floor. “You can smell ‘tired’ on me but you can’t tell if I’ve got Eau de Peaseblossom and Cobweb? Wow, things I never thought I’d say.”

There are black smudges on Stiles’ chest from the charcoal still staining his fingers. He watches them rise and fall with his sluggish breathing instead of the way Derek’s eyes are fixed on him. It’s hard to tell whether that’s distrust or anger or pity Derek’s working over there, but Stiles isn’t sure he’s equipped to handle any of the above. 

After a mile-long drag of silence, Derek says, “You smell like you.” Since he’s the Jedi fucking master of saying shit without telling you a goddamn thing. Must have been taking lessons from Deaton. 

“And does me smell like them?”

The low growl Derek lets out is enough to get Stiles’ full attention. That and the fact that Derek’s about ten feet closer than he was a second ago, red eyes and big looming shadow as far as the eye can see. 

It’s hard to tell exactly what his face is doing, the light from the window mostly blocked from this angle and the glow of Derek’s eyes eating Stiles’ nightsight alive, but it looks like he’s crouched down next to Stiles’ patch of floor. One hand closer to Stiles’ face than any sane person should ever be comfortable with, considering the claws curving down to softly kiss the floorboards. 

A wave of heat follows as he leans into Stiles’ space. Huffs a breath that scatters the drying hair pasted to Stiles’ forehead, then draws another one back in with a deep sniff. 

“Iron filings and salt and storm clouds.” Derek’s voice is thick, red-raw in a way that means alpha even if Stiles can’t look away from his eyes long enough to see how far he’s shifted. Air hits Stiles’ lungs like a kick to the chest when two sharp-tipped fingers settle against the stunningly steady beat of his pulse just below his jaw, tip his head a little to the side with the suggestion of pressure. “Caffeine. Fryer grease. A teenage boy who doesn’t shower enough.” 

Any other time having Derek this close would be enough to send Stiles’ heart skittering in his ribcage; half scared, half turned on and embarrassed as hell about both of them. Now, somehow, it makes him feel heavier under his damp-sticky skin. Tamped down, noodle-limp. Like the only way he could move at this second is if Derek picked him up and made him. 

Stiles feels like his ears are ringing, except it’s his whole body. 

Derek’s hand cradles around his jaw, careful as if Stiles is made of glass. Turns him again so they’re facing dead-on, too close to focus on one damn thing beyond the neon hum slithering through his bone marrow.

“You smell like pack,” he says slow, solemn. “They’re not the only ones who have a claim over you.”


End file.
